E-mail form won't send when using certain characters - php

Question

I have been on this for days and days, and am at the point that I have pulled out so many hairs that I now have just one hair left on my head. That hair is my last bit of pride. But seriously though, I have found dozens of answers but none seem to apply to my problem!
I have an e-mail form for a website I made. The site and form are made in Flash (AS3), the script for processing the e-mail is an external php file. The e-mail form works just fine, except for when I use certain characters:
% is not shown in the e-mail, including any text directly behind it
when a &, < or > is present, the form will say 'sending..' but not go beyond that point; I don't receive any e-mail.
All (or most at least) other characters like !##$^*_+-=~` are no problem.
I have already made sure both AS3 and php codes have
"MIME-Version: 1.0; Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8" is included in my sending if check in the php file;
the textfields in AS3 are set to htmlText instead of just text.
My scripts:
mail.php
if( $yourName == true ) {
$sender = $fromEmail;
$yourEmail = "myemail#example.com"; // Here i of course use my own email address
$ipAddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; // This gets the user's ip Address
$emailMsg = "Van: $sender\r\n" .
"Name: $yourName\r" .
"Subject: $yourSubject\n\n" .
"$yourMsg\n\n\n\n" .
"------------------------------\r" .
"Sent from IP-address $ipAddress\r" .
"X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion();
# these are three (out of many) things I tried to work around the problem #
//$emailMsg = str_replace( '&', "&", $emailMsg );
//$emailMsg = htmlspecialchars($emailMsg, ENT_QUOTES);
//$emailMsg = mysql_real_escape_string($emailMsg);
$return = "From: $sender\r\n";
if( mail($yourEmail, "$yourSubject", $emailMsg, $return, "MIME-Version: 1.0; Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8")) {
echo "sentStatus=yes";
}
else {
echo "sentStatus=no";
}
}
?>
FormScript.as
package {
/*required imports*/
public class FormScript extends Sprite {
/*here are the variable declarations*/
public function FormScript() {
sendbtn.buttonMode = true;
sendbtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, submit);
resetbtn.buttonMode = true;
resetbtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, reset);
urlRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
/*here are are some positionings and addchilds*/
function init():void {
//Set all fields to empty
yourName.htmlText = "";
fromEmail.htmlText = "";
yourSubject.htmlText = "";
yourMsg.htmlText = "";
valid.text = "";
}
function submit(e:MouseEvent):void {
//Check to see if any of the fields are empty
if(yourName.htmlText == "" || fromEmail.htmlText == "" ||
yourSubject.htmlText == "" ||yourMsg.htmlText == "" ) {
valid.text = "All fields must be filled in";
}//Check if you're using a valid email address
else if(!checkEmail(fromEmail.htmlText)) {
valid.text = "Please enter a valid e-mail address";
}
else {
valid.text = "Sending..";
var emailData:String =
"name=" + yourName.htmlText +
"&from=" + fromEmail.htmlText +
"&subject=" + yourSubject.htmlText +
"&msg=" + yourMsg.htmlText;
var urlVars:URLVariables = new URLVariables(emailData);
urlVars.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.TEXT;
urlRequest.data = urlVars; varLoad.load( urlRequest );
varLoad.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, thankYou );
}
}
function reset(e:MouseEvent):void {
init(); //call the initial clear function
}
function checkEmail(s:String):Boolean {
//yourMsg.text = escape("&");
//This tests for correct email address
var p:RegExp = /(\w|[_.\-])+#((\w|-)+\.)+\w{2,4}+/;
var r:Object = p.exec(s);
if( r == null ) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
function thankYou(e:Event):void {
var loader:URLLoader = URLLoader(e.target);
var sent = new URLVariables(loader.data).sentStatus;
//valid.text = sent;
if( sent == "yes" ) {
valid.text = "Thank you for your e-mail!"; timer = new Timer(500);
timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, msgSent);
timer.start();
}
else {
valid.text = "Something went wrong, please try again";
}
}
function msgSent(te:TimerEvent):void {
if(timer.currentCount >= 10) {
init();
timer.removeEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, msgSent);
}
}
}
}
}
Keywords:ampersand special characters symbols less-than less than greater-than greater than please don't edit this, it's for others to find this question because you can't search for an '&' and such.

Answer 1

The most obvious culprit here is messy way you're creating the emailData string. As a first step I'd recommend reformatting it to the following:
var urlVars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
urlVars.name = yourName.htmlText;
urlVars.from = fromEmail.htmlText;
urlVars.subject = yourSubject.htmlText;
urlVars.msg = yourMsg.htmlText;
I think this will automatically URI encode the values, but if not, use encodeURI() as suggested by Mark Knol.

Answer 2

Within Flash, the values need to be encoded, otherwise the querystring could be corrupted.
var emailData:String =
"name=" + encodeURI(yourName.htmlText) +
"&from=" + encodeURI(fromEmail.htmlText) +
"&subject=" + encodeURI(yourSubject.htmlText) +
"&msg=" + encodeURI(yourMsg.htmlText);

Answer 3

Try to use
$emailMsg = utf8_decode($emailMsg);
I decode all my strings I get from Flash.
If this doesn't help, use
$emailMsg = urldecode($emailMsg);
Or both :D